


Day 2. Spell

by Munnin



Series: Fictober [2]
Category: Star Wars: Clone Wars (2003) - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: rumination on the Jedi Order
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-23 06:48:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16153814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Munnin/pseuds/Munnin
Summary: How do you know if your life is normal, if it's all you've ever known?





	Day 2. Spell

Was there a moment in other Jedi’s lives? A moment when they too realised the life we led, the only life they’d known, wasn’t normal. 

In hindsight the Order went out of its way to prevent that moment of self-realisation, whether they meant to or not. To delay it as long as possible by keeping younglings from experiencing life outside the temple until we were fully indoctrinated. 

Most initiates were no more than three standard years when they were first brought to the Temple. We played together, slept in dorms with our clans. Sharing our night-time fears and daytime joys with others of our own kind. From the day we’re brought to the temple, the children of the Jedi Order have no family but the Order. Indoctrinated from the moment of separation.

No-one tells us we might not make it. That our path to knighthood won’t be as simple or as clean as our parents were led to believe. By being taking into the Order, we are given responsibility for the Galaxy. 

Failing the Jedi ideal is a fear that’s implanted early and re-enforced often. But only visible in hindsight. 

And the worst part is, I’m not even sure it’s intentional. The Jedi Order has raised younglings the same way for thousands of years, enforcing and reinforcing the fears and failings of generations long gone. A system so heavy with history it cannot see its own broken parts. 

No-one ever told us we were allowed to leave. It was never a choice we were permitted to see. Even those who did fail their Initiate Trials in pre-adolescence were funnelled to Service Corps. Jedi in name if not in knighthood. There was honour in service. So we were told, over and over, until the mere idea of refusing that service, of allowing dishonour, was simply not an option. 

Many Jedi lived their whole lives; from the day they were taken in, to the day of their deaths, never considering there might be another way. 

I was eight galactic standard years old the first time I left the Coruscant Temple. The first time I saw the world outside those walls at anything but a distance. I’d seen it, of course. The city lights of Coruscant were clearly visible from the training grounds at the base of the temple ziggurats. The gardens where we use to play in the rain. But to my young mind the ecumenopolis like the holo projections in the library. Pretty to watch but no more than that. Not real. Not really. 

I had been brought to the Temple younger than most, and under circumstances no-one had ever explained to me. Even my name Cin Vhetin, was Mando'a for white field, also means blank slate. Absent of history. 

All my life lived inside those walls, I don’t remember feeling trapped. The Temple was bigger than most people imagined; a city within a city. And it was all I’d ever known. 

The day I first set foot outside the temple was the day my world expanded. 

It was also the day I became aware that my world, my life, wasn’t entirely normal. And that there might be something about it that wasn’t right.

It was our Galactic History and Politics instructor, Master Joslin who took us outside for the first time, our clan Guardian Master Ralin following us close. A tour of the High Senate complex, to help us understand the machinery of government that held the galaxy together and at peace. To see what it was we were being trained to protect. 

Mynock clan was a little gaggle of children, no two of the same species. All wide-eyed in awe but trying not to gawk. After all, it was our first ever field trip and we had to be on our best behaviour. We represented the Jedi Order and had to be at our best. 

I looked around in amazement as we crossed from the hovercar into the public entrance of Senate Plaza. Everything was so busy, so full. People rushed from place to place, hectic and disordered. 

All too fast it became too much. Too much noise, too many beings. The swirling vortex of the Force was overwhelming. The serenity of the Temple with its microcosms of activity hadn’t prepared me for this. 

I covered my ears, squeezing my eyes closed in an effort to block it all out. I would have been left behind as the group moved on, if Guardian Ralin hadn’t stopped to kneel beside me, wrapping me in her gentle calm.

She coaxed me to open my eyes, to centre myself. 

Ashamed of my tears, I sniffed and nodded, mumbling a promise to do better. 

Master Ralin instructed me to look, to listen. To observe my surroundings without letting them overwhelm me. To view with detachment, as a Jedi must in order to maintain peace. To learn from what I saw and heard and felt but to keep myself calm. 

Diligent, and afraid of failure, I did just that – I looked, I listened, I observed; I set myself apart from the chaos around me. 

Master Ralin’s words had fallen over me like a spell. One that both lifted a veil from my eyes, and set an invisible shield between me and everything around me. 

The more I studied the world in all its complexities, the less I felt a part of it.

Something in the way people looked at us bothered me. The Jedi Initiates especially. I’d seen the way they looked at the knights and masters, but there was something else when they looked at us younglings. 

As we ventured out more and more, I watched the way people watched us. Sometimes with interest, sometimes awe and wonder

But sometimes people looked at us with sadness, whispering in hushed tones as they looked away. 

Once, a woman rushed over to us while Master Ralin was distracted and hugged us. As many of us as she could. Even as Master Ralin chased her off, the words she whispered as she clutched me rang in my ears. 

“Poor things. You’ve never known a day of love in your life.” 

I tried ask Master Ralin about it later but she brushed it off. “We are Jedi. We must be above the petty jealousies of others.”

But it wasn’t jealousy. It was compassion, pity even. 

I could see that but Master Ralin could not. And no matter how I rephrased my question, she couldn’t see it as I had.

The woman had not attacked us. She had tried to give us a gift. Something she believed we were lacking. 

The more I thought about it, the more I started to suspect she was right. Master Ralin was caring but distant. She was guardian to Mynock and Bantha clans, but never mother. Supportive, but never loving. 

It made me pay attention to the way people interacted outside the Temple: the way lovers held each other, the way parents hugged their children. The way people lit up in the presence of those they held dear.

And the lack of it within the Temple walls.

The Jedi do not love. The Jedi did not form attachments.

It wasn’t in Code. Not in those words. Because it didn’t need to be. It was in every breath I’d taken, every interaction I had growing up. It was taught to us from the beginning. From our earliest days as younglings. The younglings who remembered their birth-families felt it keenest – the distance their guardians kept, physically and emotionally. 

For me, having no memory of life before the Temple, love was an abstract. That fleeting hug was the first I’d ever known.

To love, to be attached, was to put another person above duty, above honour. Above the Order. 

Love would cloud judgement. Passion would inhibit serenity. Emotion would lead to unrest. To love was to betray peace and so to upset the balance. To risk the Dark Side. 

And yet as I lingered on the edge of one of the city’s parks, I saw no darkness in the families picnicking together, no betrayal in their happiness. 

And what of ignorance? That was explicit in the Code. 

There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.

And yet I was ignorant. Ignorant of myself - my species, my origin. 

All youngling knew their own story, and told them proudly. Stories of the Jedi had come to their world, to their homes. Jedi who had told them they were special. Had told them they had a bright and important future. Stories of families who had cried or hugged them tight. Had told them how proud they were. 

Sometimes the stories weren’t so happy. Families who had fought over letting them go. Or where there had been no families at all. Where the Jedi had come to save them, to give them a new start. 

Happy or sad, everyone had a story. 

Everyone except me. I was Cin Vhetin. The white field. 

The only link I had to my past was a star-burst shaped scar, just below my right collarbone. A scar I don’t remember life without. 

No-one would tell me how I had come to be at the temple. When I was younger, I’d tried to ask Master Ralin where I was from. I ran to her crying while the other younglings told their stories. Because I had no story to tell. 

The Jedi Guardian’s answer had always been the same – “You are an Initiate of the Jedi Order. We are your people.”

The more I asked, the more guarded Master Ralin became. 

And so, I watched; looking for someone who looked like me. Someone who might give me some clue about my origins. 

But I never saw the familiar face I hoped for. 

Coruscant was a mixing pot of peoples and cultures, of species from every corner of the galaxy. The temple was just as diverse, but for all that, I never saw another being quite like myself.

There were plenty of humanoids of every shade and form, but none with the same burnt orange skin, marked with fine lines of deep brown, like the pattern of polished wood. My skin had gotten darker as I gotten older, turning more red. Perhaps it was from being outside more, perhaps it was a factor of aging. I tried to guess how dark I’d become. If my skin would turn brown or black. But even so, no-one I saw had skin a similar shade. 

My hair grew thick and curly, the same dark brown as my eyes and the lines on my skin. Master Ralin preferred I kept it short for ease of care, it might well grow out into a frizzy halo or be twisted into dreadlocks. Several times I caught sight of someone with heavy dark locks, but more than once I’d been disappointed. Mistaking hair tails or tentacles for hair. 

I learnt as a child that I bled the colour of polished copper. The result of a careless game too near Guroot brushes in the Temple garden. Even the healers had been surprised by the colour but no-one had mentioned it again. I tried to use that to search the Temple database but even something as unique as that gave me no results. 

The more I watched, the more I noticed the way people looked at me inside the Temple too. The fleeting frown on the older masters’ faces as they passed me in the hall. The way Master Yoda singled me out with a kind word here and there. More than he did with the other younglings. The way people in the Coruscant streets looked at me, as if I was something new and unusual. With more interest than the Jedi robes usually attracted. 

I grew to suspect something was being kept from me. Perhaps for my own good, and perhaps out of an unknown guilt. What youngling doesn’t fantasise about a loving family? A family that misses them, that is proud of them. 

The more the feeling festered, the harder the shield between me and the world grew. 

When I passed my trials Master Ralin took me as her Padawan. Something that surprised me. She was a Guardian, a wrangler of younglings. And with disquiet growing with the death of Master Qui-Gon and whispers of a Sith on the rise, it seemed a very odd time for her to leave her charges.

But she had, staying with me as I progressed to the next stage of my training. 

There was something in the eyes of the Council when she came to stand behind me, hands on my shoulder to proclaim her intention to teach me. Something I couldn’t read. Something like appreciation for her sacrifice? The more I thought about it, the more I wasn’t sure if I’d misread those looks, but it too festered in me. Was I a burden no-one else was willing to take up? Master Ralin had put up with me all these years, what was a few more?

But once I was a padawan, I asked again - “I want to know who I am. Where I come from.” I tried to sound firm but undemanding. And yet I could see in her eyes I had disappointed her somehow. 

“I had hoped this was behind you.” She sighed, folding her hands in her long sleeves. “The past is not important, my padawan. It has no power over the Jedi you will become.”

“And yet it is a part of me. A part that is incomplete.” I lifted my chin, refusing to let the subject drop. 

“Only if you dwell on it.” She nodded to the scar on my chest, the edges visible at the neck of my new robes. “Like a wound, it will stay open and bleed only so long as you pick at it.”

“Master-”

“No, padawan. You must leave the past be.” Her usually soft voice took on a hardened edge. “You have chosen a path of duty and service, to the Force and to the galaxy. Perhaps you should take some time to meditate on that.” 

As I sat cross-legged on the cool stones, letting the white noise of the Room of a Thousand Fountains sooth my mind, a thought stole over me as I replayed her words in my mind. 

_You have chosen a path of duty and service._

Had I? Had I ever chosen? I had been chosen. I must have been, to have been brought to the temple to begin with. But had the choice ever been mine to make?

From my earliest days, I had been groomed to serve. Had there ever been a time when I could have chosen otherwise?

The spell broke. The veil lifted.

And even as I continued my training towards become a Jedi Knight, I watched and listened, shielding the doubt growing inside me. Once seen, I could never look on my path the same way as I once had. 

But the answer, I knew, lay at the heart of the Order. And my own way to reach it was to stay on my path. For now.

**Author's Note:**

> With great and deep appreciation to Josh King for playing hide and seek with my verb tenses.


End file.
